


Harry Potter and the Serpent of Eden

by Debesmanna



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canonical Child Abuse, Crossover, Friendship, Gen, Harry Potter Has a Pet Snake, Hogwarts, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Apocalypse, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Surprise it's Crowley, and Aziraphale is Ron's rat, for Good Omens, for Harry Potter, like it's barely there but ya know, lots of fun at Hogwarts, the Dursleys exist, they adopt a bunch of pubescent wizards that's what, what do an angel and a demon do in retirement?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-07-12 10:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19944991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debesmanna/pseuds/Debesmanna
Summary: A year before the Apocalypse-that-isn't, Crowley snakes into Little Whinging and has a chat with 8-year-old Harry Potter. After the world is saved, the Boy Who Lived recaptures the attention of the Serpent of Eden with the whole setting-loose-a-boa-constrictor incident. What better way for a demon to spend his semi-retirement than as the pet snake of a particularly fascinating young wizard? With Aziraphale posing as Ron's new pet rat,  Hell and Heaven are on their way to Hogwarts!





	1. A Snake in the Grass

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I blame Stellar for this. It’s my own fault, but I’m still going to blame her.
> 
> Please excuse my unruly mashup of American and British turns-of-phrase. I read enough that some slang-not-my-own slips in, but the aphorisms of the American Midwest are strong with me.
> 
> On the timeline: Good Omens was published in May 1990. So, I have set Armageddidn’t in the summer of 1989. As for the Harry Potter universe, while there are some internal inconsistencies in the timeline, the Battle of Hogwarts has the firm date of early morning May 2 1998. Therefore, Harry began his first term at Hogwarts in September 1991, two years post-Armageddidn’t.

Crowley wasn’t born a snake.

If we’re being factual about it, he wasn’t born at all. But either way, Crowley began his existence as purely angel. (1) After the Fall, the nature of each angel folded and twisted into its new demon shape in its own unique way, like clean pieces of paper folded into grotesque demon-origami. Crowley may never have settled permanently in his “serpent” aspect if not for the events of cosmic import which he influenced while in that shape.

After that, well. The serpent folded into him, lines deep in the paper of his being which never quite smoothed away, no matter how he unfolded and refolded himself.

Crowley didn’t mind, exactly. He rather liked snakes. Excellent conversationalists, that lot. It’s why he took the shape in the first place. Crowley was nothing if not inquisitive.

He had not expected scintillating conversation on the day he slithered into a little suburb in Surrey. He simply sought a brief respite from nannying the Antichrist—a project that, for all its importance, chafed after a while. Crowley was used to wandering the world freely, tying himself in place as he chose and cutting loose as it suited him.

A little pick-me-up, was what he needed. Leave Aziraphale to Antichrist duty for the afternoon. Visit a neighborhood, sniff out discord—suburbs were _rife_ with discord, bubbling _just_ underneath their bland facades—and encourage it to blossom into temptation or corruption. Or, failing such juicy finds, cause a good bit of mayhem. A place like this could use a good bit of mayhem, in Crowley’s opinion. Even considering the shadow of the looming apocalypse. (2)

What Crowley had _definitely_ not expected was to taste a peculiar scent in the air. In all his millennia of scenting scents, with a snake tongue and a human nose and a whole variety of olfactory systems in between, he had never scented a scent quite like it.

If there was one thing that Crowley couldn’t stand, it was a mystery. He had built his reputation on wiliness. On knowing things that others didn’t know, or convincingly acting as though he did. It just wouldn’t do to be confounded by a… suburban smelly-smell.

Following the smelly-smell led Crowley to the backyard of a house no different from the other houses on the row. In the backyard, a human hatchling… er, boy. Eh, sod it. A hatchling, spade in hand, dug ferociously at the dirt in front of a row of manicured shrubs as though the dirt offended him.

Keeping to the shady grass near the fence, Crowley snaked closer. He tasted the air. Yup, definitely the source of the smell. It was like… like a thunderstorm, but trapped, compressed into too small a space and all the more potent for being so concentrated.

From the house, the patio door slammed open. Crowley froze in sync with the human-hatchling-who-smelled-like-a-thunderstorm.

“ _Still_ turning the earth, are you, boy?”

The woman who spoke from the doorway was related to the human-hatchling-who-smelled-like-a-thunderstorm—no, too long of a name for such a bitty thing. The stormling. Crowley could sense the kin connection between the stormling and the woman. He could see the adult’s thin, lanky frame reflected in the smaller, still growing child’s. There was something similar about the eyes, too: hers blue and the stormling’s green, but united in their expressions of mutual dislike.

The stormling half-twisted to speak over his shoulder.

“The ground’s hard. It hasn’t rained—”

“Did I _ask_ for excuses for your laziness?” the woman snapped.

Crowley frowned, inasmuch as a snake could frown. Well, that was hardly fair, was it? The stormling was _obviously_ working hard. He was practically covered in sweat and dirt. And the ground _was_ dry.

The stormling didn’t protest, though. He directed his gaze back to the ground.

“No, Aunt Petunia.”

From inside the house, another child’s voice called.

“Mummy! It’s _hot_! Where’s my _lemonade_?”

The woman’s sour face sweetened before Crowley's eyes as she called back, “Coming, Duddy-dearest!”

Before she retreated into the house, she called out, “Those seedlings had better be planted by suppertime, boy, or you’ll not get any!”

She slid the patio door shut behind her. The stormling looked longingly up at the kitchen window, where what was obviously the woman’s own hatchling sat at the table while his mother fixed up a pitcher of lemonade for him.

He looked back at the hard earth in front of the hedgerow. It wasn’t even half dug, and the sun was getting on in the afternoon sky. The stormling looked like he might cry.

Now, technically, Crowley had no business feeling sympathy for upset children. He had no business feeling sympathy of _any_ sort, really, let alone toward _children_.

But, well… surely it was _his_ turn for a minor kindness? Hadn’t Aziraphale performed a minor _un_ -kindness last week when, after instructing Warlock in the importance of respecting Brother Slug, he snuck back into the garden after sundown to salt the little pests gunning for his begonias?

Had to keep the scales balanced, didn’t they? To keep either Upstairs or Downstairs from getting suspicious.

“Oh, bugger it,” Crowley said.

The stormling startled. At just that moment, the tiniest breeze stirred the leaves of the tree above them so that the sunlight caught Crowley’s deep green scales. The stormling’s eyes fixed on him. He frowned.

“You’re not supposed to swear,” he accused.

“Maybe _you’re_ not,” Crowley retorted, amused. “ _I_ do as I please.”

After a moment’s consideration, the stormling nodded.

“Uncle Vernon says swears, sometimes. I think different people have different rules.”

It was at that moment that Crowley realized an important little detail; He had initially spoken in the language of snakes, not in English. (He _could_ speak human languages, even in snake-form. Demonic prerogative.) The stormling had heard him speak snake, and responded in the same language.

Interesting. It had been a long time since Crowley had met a human gifted with Parseltongue.

Crowley slithered closer. He stopped about a body-length (his) of distance away from the stormling. The stormling was not at all afraid of him. In fact, his frustrated near-tears had dried, leaving his startlingly green eyes clear and curious. From his close distance, Crowley spotted a new detail to add to his catalogue of Interesting Things about this little human: a lightning-shaped cut, quietly radiating power like a recently switched-off incandescent lightbulb radiates heat, scarred into the center of his forehead.

The stormling continued, “Like how Dudley gets to stay inside and drink lemonade and play computer games, and I have to dig the garden.”

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Crowley said disapprovingly.

Shrugging, the stormling said, “Just how it is when you’re a cousin, I guess.”

Now at this point, Crowley can be forgiven for not recognizing the wrongness of this statement. Over his millennia on Earth, he had witnessed a vast array of kinship systems and systems of social hierarchy, many of which the modern observer would find bizarre or even cruel. Crowley also contended with the complicated hierarchies of demons on a daily basis—and before them, even worse, _angelic_ hierarchies.

So, given his lack of context, Crowley replied only, “Still rubbish, though.”

He stretched his neck to bring himself closer to the stormling’s eye-level. With an emphatic nod, he added, “Right bollocks, it is.”

Instead of scolding him for his swear, the corners of the stormling’s mouth turned up in a sweet grin, and he giggled.

Then, from inside, a shriek: “HARRY!”

Crowley and the stormling—no, Harry. Crowley and Harry turned their heads in unison, freezing in place for the second time at the prospect of Aunt Petunia’s wrath.

But Aunt Petunia's blue eyes were not narrowed in anger: they were wide with fear. She came barreling out of the house and down the lawn toward them. Grabbing Harry’s arm, she pulled him up and away from Crowley.

“Aunt Petunia—” Harry protested.

At the same time, Aunt Petunia shouted, “COME AWAY FROM THAT THING!”

“But he’s not dangerous, Aunt Petunia, he’s just a green snake—” (3)

Aunt Petunia, however, was not listening. She hauled Harry away by his arm, shouting, “DUDLEY, YOU STAY INSIDE OR SO HELP ME GOD I WILL SEND YOUR SEGA BACK TO JAPAN!”

Dudley stood in the open door, gawping at the scene. At his mother’s threat, he burst into tears and ran back inside.

“Noooo, Mum, not my Segaaaa!”

Harry got his feet under him and allowed himself to be hauled. He waved at Crowley in apology. Crowley responded with a serpentine shrug, sort of like a body roll, which Harry seemed to understand.

The patio door slammed shut.

Crowley tasted the air. The storm-smell had already begun to dissipate in Harry’s absence. He started slithering back along the fence, the way he’d come.

Such an interesting little human. He’d have to check back in with the boy in the future—if he and Aziraphale succeeded in ensuring that there _was_ a future.

For now, though: glancing in through the kitchen window on the other corner of the house as he passed, Crowley saw the stormling alone in the kitchen, his aunt presumably calming her son now that she had ensured her nephew wasn’t about to be bitten by a snake. Harry was sat at the kitchen island, staring at a glass of lemonade in front of him with a stunned expression.

Crowley crawled up the fence until he drew level with the window. He waved his head back and forth to catch Harry’s attention. When Harry looked up, Crowley winked.

Harry glanced around himself first, presumably making sure that he was alone. Then, he winked back.

Crowley stayed to watch him pick up his glass of lemonade before continuing over the fence and into the yard next door.

While Crowley was pleased with himself, rescuing a child from the hot sun and earning him a cool lemonade might’ve been _too_ much on the angelic side of things. Did frightening Aunt Petunia rebalance the scale?

Ah, well. He still had time before he was expected back. Even if he took the long way—i.e., slithering—he could still make some trouble along the way if he hurried.

As he slithered through the yard of 5 Privet Drive, he let his body lengthen and his scales darken to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. What order of angel is irrelevant to the story at hand, and Crowley will tell you is irrelevant in its entirety. (He is both right and wrong. While what we have been influences what we are, it’s the _who_ that She cares about, in the end.) [Return]
> 
> 2\. The author would like to interject here to assure her parents, if they ever read this, that while her views on suburbs align with Crowley’s, said views have everything to do with the fact that suburbs exist, and nothing to do with the fact that they raised her in one. The suburbs are the problem, not her parents’ characters or their raising of her. That said, should the author’s parents desire a bit of mayhem, the author would be quite chuffed indeed to gather her friends and proceed to her childhood neighborhood posthaste. [Return]
> 
> 3\. Green snakes are not venomous. Of the four species of snakes native to the UK, only the adder is venomous. Harry, who happened to quite like snakes and had read up on them at school, knew this, while Petunia, who quite disliked most animals found in nature, did not. [Return]
> 
> ADDITIONALLY: The topic of child abuse in _Harry Potter/Fantastic Beasts_ falls mostly outside the scope of this lighthearted fic. However, the interested reader might find ["Child Abuse in the Wizarding World"](https://nerdsthatgeek.com/blogs/chp) a good place to start if they wish to further explore this topic. If the reader has a fascination with speculative history and $1.99 to spare, the author also recommends the _Hardcore History_ podcast and its episode ["Suffer the Children"](https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-31-blitz-suffer-the-children/) for more information on the history of child abuse and its possible impacts on the development of societies. Please listen to this second resource wisely. Those sensitive to the topic may prefer not to engage with its frank discussion of child abuse and methods of abuse throughout history.


	2. June 1991 - A Snake at Large

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Wow! Thanks for all of the kudos, bookmarks, and comments, ya’ll! I’d love to promise more frequent updates than every three weeks, but real life is particularly busy at the moment and I’ve never been a speedy writer. In fact, this is more of an interlude than a real chapter, but hey, it’s still words-on-the-page. I’ll get the next bit out when I can. 
> 
> On HP canon: While the “Vanishing Glass” scene in the film adaptation takes place at the London Zoo, another possible location for the event is Marwell Zoo. I chose Marwell Zoo due to [this](https://www.hp-lexicon.org/2005/10/24/in-search-of-little-whinging/) delightful analysis on the location of the fictional Little Whinging.

After the apocalypse-that-wasn’t, Crowley napped. 

Not for eighty years, mind you. No, just a lovely, lazy, lounging-in-bed kind of nap. Aziraphale was there this time. Sometimes they read, sometimes they cuddled. On one memorable occasion, they employed Newt Pulsifer to bring them tiramisu from a local bakery because, in Aziraphale’s opinion, “miracled food just isn’t the same.” Crowley couldn’t resent the intrusion _too_ much, not considering the radiant delight on Aziraphale’s face at the prospect of a good dessert. 

(Newt retreated as quickly as he’d come, too, muttering, “I don’t want to know.”) (1)

They indulged themselves for a little less than a year’s time before wordlessly and mutually deciding to reacquaint themselves with the world that they had helped to save. 

On a warm day in June, Aziraphale got out of bed and donned his familiar, worn waistcoat. 

Crowley, quite content in his silk pajamas and harboring no intentions to change, asked, “Getting peckish? Off to Paris for pretentious pancakes?” 

“Oh, no,” Aziraphale replied breezily. “I was just thinking, you know—” 

“Dangerous occupation, that.” 

“—the shop mostly keeps itself in my absence, but. The books _could_ use a good dusting. I won’t be gone long. I’ll bring back coffee, if you like.” 

Unable to immediately formulate a good quip on the subject of “needing a good dusting,” Crowley responded around a yawn. “Bring it back _in_ the pot this time.” 

Huffily, Aziraphale retorted, “ _Must_ you bring that up _every time_? There was an extenuating circumstance, you know!” (2)

“Of course there was, Angel.”

Aziraphale left, muttering under his breath about the important difference between stimulation and intoxication. (3) Behind his back, Crowley smiled affectionately.

Knowing full-well that Aziraphale hadn’t dusted the bookshop since 1816, what with all of the volcanic ash, (4) Crowley sensed the beginning-of-the-end of their long holiday. He picked up the TV remote and tuned into one of those sensationalist news channels dedicated to exaggerating the faults of humanity—which Crowley had, of course, invented. The current discussion was on the depravity of some popular American film that Crowley would _definitely_ have to see.

Sure enough, Aziraphale’s “won’t be gone long” stretched into several hours, during which time the film criticism yielded to slightly more relevant world news and then to a segment on weather forecasting technology that bored Crowley nearly to tears. At this point, he phoned the bookshop. 

Aziraphale apologized profusely for his lateness, but, “A lovely gentleman came to the shop looking for a first edition copy of _The Hobbit_ for his granddaughter, and we got to talking, and, oh, I do hope that I haven’t worried you—” 

“Not at all, Angel,” Crowley said, unable to keep the smile out of his voice. “You, _selling_ a _book_? _That’s_ a miracle even _I_ wouldn’t attempt to thwart.” 

“You are _quite_ insufferable, do you know that?” Aziraphle answered tartly.

And oh, that’s a good idea: “Bring me back a tart, too, after you’re done.”

“I will _not_ ,” Aziraphale said, both of them knowing that he would, and hung up.

A jarring jingle interrupted the weather segment. Crowley refocused on the TV to see a “BREAKING NEWS” banner flash across the screen.

“ _Breaking news_ ,” intoned the anchorperson, unnecessarily. “ _Chaos erupted at the Marwell Zoo in Hampshire this afternoon when a boa constrictor escaped from its habitat._ ” 

Crowley sat up in bed eagerly. 

“An escaped boa constrictor! Now _that’s_ my kind of news.” 

He watched the report intently. Apparently, zoo officials had no idea how the snake had gotten out. It was as though the glass had simply... vanished. 

Crowley frowned. Demonic intervention, perhaps? Setting a snake on a young boy _did_ sound like something that even one of his dull colleagues—former colleagues? Probable former colleagues—was capable of thinking of. 

“ _While no one has yet been injured, the boa constrictor remains at large. Anyone in the area is advised to stay indoors and comply with any instructions given by police or animal control..._ ” 

Well, whoever it was, they obviously didn’t think of the poor snake before they set it loose. What would happen to it now? Surely the zoo would want it recaptured alive, but... 

Coming to a decision, Crowley threw off the bedcovers. What better way to get back in the game after saving the world than saving a fellow snake-at-large?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Newt was at the same time wildly over-imaginative as to the nature of Crowley and Aziraphale’s relationship, and not nearly imaginative enough. [Return]
> 
> 2\. In 1534, Aziraphale popped over to Cairo at Crowley’s request to pick up a pot of coffee from “that one place, you know, the really blue one.” The extenuating circumstance in question was a bunch of religious-types who thought that coffee drinking was sinful. They formed a mob, as you do, and went around ransacking coffeehouses. Poor Aziraphale showed up right in the middle of it all, and had a pot of hot coffee poured over his head by a fanatic for the trouble. [Return]
> 
> 3\. This being the crux of the “not-sin” v. “sin” argument. [Return]
> 
> 4\. From the eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia the year before. There were further ramifications to this historic event than causing Aziraphale to dust his books, but they’re not relevant to our story, and while the author greatly enjoys footnoting the historic events witnessed by our long-lived protagonists, she has perhaps gotten carried away with footnoting this chapter, already. [Return]
> 
> ADDITIONALLY, the “depraved American film” Crowley hears about on TV was The Silence of the Lambs, which was released in February 1991. After the delightful but unnecessary amounts of research that I did for this chapter’s historical notes, I didn’t feel like tracking down any specific criticisms of the film, but somebody had to’ve objected to it on moral grounds.


End file.
